My bread can’t compare to these beauties of Ian’s.
“Ugh! Their house smells like wet dog!” commented a friend’s sassy teenage daughter about a mutual acquaintance.
“I don’t want to know what you think my house smells like,” I teased.
“Oh! Your house smells wonderful! Like fresh bread and cinnamon!”
____________
“Is this homemade, too?!” asked Son’s Friend #1 in astonishment.
“Everything here is homemade!” answered Son’s Friend #2 with glee.
When the book Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche came out in the early ‘80s, many of us had a laugh about the gender stereotypes portrayed in the book. Unfortunately, the satire was lost on some of my acquaintances, who truly believed that to eat quiche (or to try any foods with foreign-sounding names for that matter) was to lose their masculinity.
They were, of course, way off base, but I understand the importance of food to our identity. “You are what you eat,” after all. Foods can be tribal affiliations—Coke vs. Pepsi, vegans vs. meat eaters, carbs vs. protein.
Even if we eat the same things, the vocabulary of food defines and divides us. Soda or pop? Hoagie or sub? Chips or fries? Biscuits or cookies? Casserole or hot dish? Brownies or bars?
But for the adventuresome, those differences quickly resolve into similarities. Cook enough different foods, and the divisions become connections.
Take quiche lorraine, for example. It is just the French version of the English bacon and egg pie. The variations within “quiche” and “pie” are greater than the differences between them.
A gallette is just a tart with a French accent.
Mexican tortillas are almost the same as Indian roti.
Greek pita bread could be mistaken for Indian naan.
French ragout, Indian curry, and Latin American sancocho are all just stew by a different name.
Sweet, sour, bitter, salt, umame. Starch, sugar, protein. It all comes down to biology, and we all need the same nutrients to keep us going. The protein in my burgers may come from soybeans, and yours from beef, but we both love that slab of umame-rich protein on a nest of carbohydrates (a bun, some rice, some bulgher) and dripping with sweet/sour catsup (or ketchup, or sauce…).
The spicing may differ, but the essence is the same. Just like us. We are what we eat, after all.
A couple of years ago, I got The Gourmet Cookie Book for Christmas. I immediately loved the book just for its stunningly elegant graphic design. It’s a book worth having, even if you never make a single recipe out of it, because it is a piece of art all by itself. It took me a while to get around to making the cookies, but every recipe I’ve tried has been good so far.
Yesterday, I made Speculaas (Saint Nicholas Cookies) from this book. I think I’ve found my new favourite cookie. These lovely biscuits combine the best of biscotti, rusks, and gingerbread in a highly dunkable package! I made the recipe straight from the book:
Combine in a medium bowl:
3 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1 tsp cloves
1 tsp nutmeg
½ tsp ground aniseed
½ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp salt
Beat in a large bowl until light and fluffy:
1 cup butter
1 ½ cups brown sugar
Stir in:
3 Tbsp milk
Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, stirring until it is well combined. Form the dough into a ball and knead on a well floured board. Roll into a rectangle ¼-inch thick, and cut into rectangles 2 ½ inches by 1 ½ inches with a knife or cutter (I used my bench scraper, and it did a lovely job). Place the rectangles on a buttered cookie sheet, decorate with blanched almonds, halved or slivered (press the almonds gently into the dough), and brush them with lightly beaten egg white.
Bake at 375°F for 12 to 15 minutes, or until browned and firm.
Sunday breakfast was biscuits (or, as I have to say to my Kiwi kids, American biscuits, lest they thing we’re having cookies). I sometimes forget about biscuits–generally only making them when there are no eggs in the house—but they make such a lovely breakfast, slathered with homemade jam! Make enough, and they’re equally good at lunchtime with cheese and mustard.
For some forgotten reason, I always make my biscuits heart shaped. The crispy pointy end is absolutely the best part!
Long about now, the summer bounty is over, the winter crops aren’t yet producing, and we start eating the foods we preserved over summer.
Long about now, we remember the brandied cherries.
We don’t make many (we don’t eat many)—one pint jar full. On top of a scoop of vanilla ice cream, accompanying a chocolate brownie, or all on their own, they are a decadent treat. Like much of the summer bounty stored up, they feel like buried treasure when we remember them on a cold, rainy day.
The well-used Brownie page
In the interest of full disclosure, I admit I was raised in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and I claim Pennsylvania Dutch heritage.
But my Michigan-born husband agrees that nobody does junk food better than the Pennsylvania Dutch.
My husband the saltaholic raves about Bickles chips and Snyders pretzels. I, with my sweet tooth would swim through crocodile infested water for a whoopie pie or a slice of shoo fly pie.
So when I’m looking for pure decadence, unencumbered by nutrients, I open the Mennonite Community Cookbook.
Usually, it falls open to page 281—Brownies.
I have modified this recipe, reducing the sugar slightly, and substituting cocoa for unsweetened chocolate (which isn’t easily available here), but I hate to mess too much with perfection…
Oh, and I ALWAYS make a double batch…here’s my doubled version
¾ c. cocoa powder
1 c. butter or shortening
1 ½ c. sugar
4 eggs
1 c. flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 c. chopped nuts, chocolate chips, or coconut
2 tsp vanilla
Melt cocoa and butter together. Beat eggs thoroughly and add sugar. Combine egg and chocolate mixtures and blend well. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Blend wet and dry ingredients together, mixing until smooth. Add nuts and vanilla.
Spread dough in a greased 9 x 13-inch pan. Bake at 350°F (180°C) for 30 minutes.
Time for another tribute to one of my favourite kitchen tools. We have three cast iron frying pans. As I recall, two were garage sale finds and one was a wedding present. At least one of them gets used nearly every day.
I love the cast iron pans for their weight. Though it can take several minutes to heat them up, once they’re warm, they cook gently and evenly, without a searing hot spot in the middle and cold edges. I also love the pans for their ability to go from stovetop to oven—gravies and béchamel sauces made in a cast iron skillet can easily be popped into a warm oven to finish cooking, as can frittata.
I always make cornbread in a cast iron skillet—heating the skillet on the stove before pouring in the batter gives the finished bread wonderful crispy edges! And, of course, making flatbreads of any kind in cast iron is a pleasure—its mass allows it to quickly but gently bake a bread.
And it’s always nice to know I’ve got a handy weapon in the kitchen, you know…just in case Sauruman or Shelob shows up at the door (after all, we do live in Middle Earth…;) )
Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there!
I have difficulty with Mother’s Day, and so I’m glad that my family allows me to observe it as I wish, by forgetting the day entirely. The ‘traditional’ breakfast in bed for Mom on Mother’s Day would just about kill me. I’d have to stay in bed two to three hours longer than usual in order for them to bring breakfast to me there, and the thought of eating in bed is completely unappealing; bed is not a place for food. More than that, I always make a cooked breakfast on Sunday mornings. I do it because I enjoy it. I do it because that way I get exactly what I’m craving every Sunday morning (though I do occasionally take requests). Why would I give that up for Mother’s Day?
And doing my chores for me, so I can sit around and eat bonbons all day? Are you kidding? If I have to sit still more than twenty minutes I go stir crazy. That wouldn’t do at all for Mother’s Day.
So this morning, we had lemon blueberry muffins. In a nod to the day, I made up the batter last night, so all I had to do was scoop it into the muffin tin and throw it into the oven this morning.
I also cleaned the house yesterday, so I could do outdoor chores today, which I vastly prefer to scrubbing the toilet. Much better to do work I want to do, that to do nothing at all!
So, however you like to spend your day—eating bonbons or digging ditches—I hope you enjoyed your day!
Two rejections of the latest novel, and a $65 parking ticket…must be time to bake some cake! A slice of cake and a cup of tea makes everything better, right?
I eat them almost every night in dinner, and usually with lunch, and often in between meals, too. Nothing satisfies my munchies like the sweet juicy crunch of a carrot. I know I’d automatically reach for cake over carrots, if I could get it, but cake is like riding the crest of a big wave on your boogie board—a thrill while it lasts, but pretty soon you’re going to be washed up on the sand. Cake’s sugar crash can be brutal, but carrots are both satisfying and sustaining.
I could go on about carrots’ nutritional values—how they contain lots of vitamin A, C, and K, how they are low in calories and high in fibre. But frankly, I don’t care. They are delicious and satisfy my snacking cravings; who cares about the rest?
I grow a lot of carrots, but never enough to get us through the year. My favourite variety is Touchon, a sweet orange carrot that grows beautifully in my garden. I also plant Purple Dragon, Solar Yellow, and Nutri-Red, just for fun and variety.
I love braised carrots, roasted carrots, grilled carrots, carrots in soup, carrots in my macaroni and cheese, and carrots in salad. But mostly I love carrot sticks, eaten any time of day or night, whenever I’m feeling a little peckish.
Robinne Weiss 